A CROWDED POND.

91

The fact is, sport is no longer sport in this wonderful country, this veritable Promised Land, where gamekeepers have been on strike for several centuries.

Towards evening the whole party came out, and we invested one of the great ponds on the south-west of the village. Not the sands of the sea-shore, nor the stars of heaven, can give an idea of the flocks of wild duck which blacken the surface of the water. By the declining light, the compact masses seemed to be immense floating rafts which divided themselves into squadrons under the shot which we poured upon them. The night fell rapidly, happily for them, and put an end to this one-sided warfare. The flesh of the wild duck of these parts is unpleasant to the palate; among the immense number only a few birds. served to recruit our larder.

On the following day we left this enchanting country, much to our regret, and the after evenings in our tent were frequently enlivened by our recollections of our short sojourn, of what we did, and our ideas of what we might have done.

We had some difficulty to get out of our camp; the game escorted us without any resentment, and added its many voices to the chorus of the population, who bestowed most eloquent praises and thanks upon us,

for having delivered them from the 300 pounds weight wild boar. At a short distance from the village one of our party killed, from his ass's back, twelve pigeons by one shot, so that the province of Fayoum was thenceforth dear to the memory of our cook. We missed these gluts of game sorely in the Desert, and many times did we speak low and softly of Tamyèh, when English preserves and sardines formed the staple of our food. From Tamyèh, the north-eastern extremity of the province of Fayoum, we intended to journey to the centre, halting at the village of Senouhrès, one of the most important localities after Mèdinet.

We were still crossing the desert, but it was less dusty and less perilous in this part than in that which we had travelled through from Dachour. Here, the ground was firmer; the camels, the asses, the Arabs, and ourselves could move more freely, and on the first day we accomplished without over fatigue a stage which enabled us to sleep that night at Senouhrès.

Senouhrès—The Municipal Council in High Spirits-Hasné the Dancing Girl-The Fellah Women-A very Low Fellow, even after Death -An Abduction.

WE were beginning to get out of the sand, the village appeared in the distance, like an immense fortress perched upon an elevated plateau and covered with graceful minarets and cupolas. Those domes which first came into view belonged to an ancient cemetery of considerable extent, now abandoned and ruinous, but whose importance bears witness to that of Senouhrès in former times.

A number of pools, rivulets, and small canals make the approach to the village difficult and tedious. As we had to pass without any intermediate stage from fine sand to a marshy soil, it took us several hours to get now round, and then across, these endless small obstacles which divided us from the destination which we expected to have reached much more easily. The village of Senouhrès, in consideration of its commercial, and especially its agricultural importance, has

1

a regularly constituted administration. Authority is there installed on an official footing by no means inferior to our most complicated sous-prefectures, so that forewarned by our dragoman, we prepared for a complete series of formalities. After we had made. the tour of the entire village, we pitched our tents to the south, in a meadow, on the border of a delicious stream, and in the shade of grand palm-trees. We had patriotically hoisted our national flag before the eyes of the astonished population, and were gravely preparing to put on our pearl-grey gloves in order to do proper homage to the scheik and the other magistrates of the town.

Already our animals, adorned with their gayest caparisons, had crossed the ford which lay between us and the municipal dwelling, already we scented the coffee which would certainly be offered to us, when our dragoman, preceding the line, entered into a long conference with a brilliantly-attired young Arab, who had come running to meet us, quite out of breath, and who now began to use most expressive pantomime. We stopped, wondering, and presently the dragoman turned back, and announced to us, that the scheik and the whole Municipal Council, apprised of our intended visit, found it impossible to receive us on that

THE MUNICIPAL COUNCIL.

95

day, but that on the following morning, without fail, those gentlemen would have the pleasure of paying us a visit of welcome. In the meantime they begged to present their homage and good wishes.

Very little concerned at this delay, we were about to return to our tents, when some of the party, not willing to have had so much trouble for nothing, induced the dragoman to make certain enquiries which enabled him to conduct us to the quarter in which the dancers live, those Almées of whom we had perpetually talked before leaving Paris, and of whom we dreamed every evening, and indeed afternoon. After many twistings and turnings in narrow lanes between small and dirty houses, we arrived at a little door through which a crowd of Arabs, of all ages, and sizes, and of both sexes was pressing. It was by no means the mysterious portal of our fancy, guarded by fantastic' beings adorned with many-coloured costumes and armed with sabres; it was a free passage of the most liberal kind, and we simply walked in without In the middle of a small square any announcement. court, a dozen women, seated on carpets and mats, were nibbling oranges and drinking water, in the company of several very well-dressed personages who were not at all disturbed by our arrival. We saluted